It has been a day. Yesterday we learned that Hwy 101 — the only real road heading south — was intermittently closed all day every day only allowing 90 cars pass every two hours due to a recent landslide. We also heard that if you got there before 9am, cars were released through every 30 minutes. We tried so hard to get there before 9am. But we didn’t. We arrived at 9:06. We were the 8th car in line and had to sit for almost two hours. At least we had the camper with lots of snacks, books, and a bathroom. I took Sophie on a one mile walk. Daniel tried to work, but internet was spotty. It was a rough spot to our day. We have also had a rough ending, but I’ll share that later. For now, this is what the start of our 15th day on the road looked like.
After clearing the landslide, we stopped
at the tourist spot, Trees of Mystery. We don’t often do these touristy
things, but this was a fun spot. The kids especially enjoyed the
swinging bridges in the tree canopy (this might have made my knees a
little wobbly) and the gondola up to the top of the mountain. The end
was full of lots of enormous tree sculptures and audio of many tall
tales related to Paul Bunyan and others. It was a fun mid morning
activity. After this side adventure, we continued south with the plan of
camping just north of San Francisco tonight.
After the Trees of Mystery, we made lunch and then headed further south on Hwy 101. We decided we wanted to drive on Hwy 1 down the coast for a bit, so we drove over a pretty dicey mountain pass with plans to park at a beach somewhere near Mendocino. I would grill and we would enjoy some time by the water before heading on down to be closer to San Francisco. All was going well, until it wasn’t. We were almost to Fort Bragg when Daniel noticed that his exhaust brake was no longer working. Then he noticed that he only had two gears: first and fourth. Suddenly all of our up-hill climbs were all at 5mph. We chugged slowly up hills and coasted mostly down. Whenever we had cell service I started googling and calling possible campgrounds. Where would we land on a Friday night? Thankfully a marina had a spot. We parked on a hope and a prayer. I cooked dinner (not by the beach like we had idyllically imagined) and Daniel started trying to figure out what could be wrong. We aren’t out of the woods yet, but it is currently looking like it is an electrical problem and not the transmission (or something like that). Hopefully we can head out tomorrow without any major setbacks. Say a little prayer for us though!
The Trees of Mystery made our 26th hike of 2021 (26/52) and we walked 4 miles. This brings us to 74 miles hiked this year.
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